


Making A Stand

by Lillielle



Category: The Stand - Stephen King
Genre: Apocalyptic End Game, Dubious Consent, Gen, OC, Self Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, Superflu, epidemic, self injury
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-13
Updated: 2014-01-12
Packaged: 2018-01-08 13:57:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1133443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lillielle/pseuds/Lillielle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Disclaimer: I own nothing.</p><p> Peggy keeps having dreams, of dark and light, of good and evil...she wants no part of any of it. She's not sure she's going to have a choice. Warnings for suicidal themes, self harm, and dubious consent.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Making A Stand

The alarm clock went off, with a strident blare of sound, and Peggy knocked it to the carpet with a careless sweep of one hand, feeling the tears already start slipping down her face as _awake_ spread through her body.

It had been five days since the death of her sister, and three since the death of her mother-and her mother had been getting better in the end, she could have sworn it. Peggy herself felt fine, not even a tickle in the back of her throat or a chill plagued her, and in some ways, that made it all so much worse. She could handle being sick at this point, as the calendar ticked over into July and the sun burned down on the oh-so-empty world. How was she supposed to handle being _well_?

And then there were the dreams...a dark man, shrouded in robes, his eyes glinting like a weasel's, beckoning her onward, straight-razor glittering like frost in his hand. An old black woman, rocking on a porch, as the corn rustled around her, and the sky went on forever. _Come on and see me._

She was cracking up.

Finally, Peggy creaked into a sitting position, wrinkling her nose at the sickly sweet stench that floated in through the half-open window. Her town was rotting. Rotting from the inside out, like some mushy and black-spotted peach, and wasn't that just the worst?

She didn't think anyone else had survived. It was a small town, this town perched just on the border of Virginia and North Carolina. When the sickness started, Captain Trips, there had been barricades on the main roads, manned by soldiers with sweaty faces that glowed with fever, who had to prop their rifles between their knees to sneeze. It hadn't lasted long, but at least it was enough to ensure that there wasn't a cavalcade of corpses down Main.

She didn't want to go West. She didn't want to find the old woman, either, though. In...Kansas? Nebraska? One of those states, anyway, the kind that were flatter than a sheet of paper, where the wind howled across miles. Where all you could smell is the corn.

But Peggy didn't want to stay here, either, where her sister and mother decayed in the basement, because she couldn't bear to properly bury them. She knew that she should, especially in the explosive summer heat (the smell would never leave), but she...couldn't. So instead, she'd laid them out to rest, in coffins she'd scrounged from the mortuary three streets over, her mother wearing the strand of best pearls and her sister saturated in the strawberry perfume she'd loved to spritz in the air. It wasn't the best, but it would have to do.

Really, everything she did these days was like that. It would have to do, as she dressed herself from her mother's closet, wearing baggy "old lady" shirts and shorts that came down to her knees. It would have to do, as she made a makeshift breakfast of dry cereal and what bread hadn't molded yet, with smears of raspberry jam.

"I want more," Peggy said aloud, as she opened the screen door that creaked when it rained, and stepped onto the tiny enclosed porch. The street was howlingly empty, save for the collapsed, broken body of Mr. Thompson from down the road. His hands had been run over, but she knew he'd died of Captain Trips. Even from here, she could see the black patches on his neck.

"I can find more," Peggy continued and realized, for the first time, how much she needed people.


End file.
